Business continuity management (BCM) ensures business resiliency before, during and after a disruption. This has become a crucial discipline in an increasingly complex, interconnected global economy.

BCM has moved beyond the traditional focus on recovering IT systems following a disaster to ensuring the ongoing resiliency of critical business processes. Enterprises that fail to practice effective BCM planning and exercising could risk catastrophic business failures caused by events ranging from natural disasters to disease outbreaks to supply chain failures. BCM now requires not only technical expertise, but also a detailed understanding of business requirements; legal and regulatory requirements; the demands of the enterprise's industry vertical and key business partners; and worldwide political, cultural and environmental issues.

BCM and IT disaster recovery management professionals and other IT leaders should consider the following factors when developing and maturing a BCM program. These factors may vary widely, depending on the enterprise:

• The regulatory, political, cultural, environmental and contractual demands facing the enterprise

• The business availability needs of the mission-critical business processes and system resources (both internal and belonging to external partners)

• The maturity of the enterprise's existing BCM program, based on benchmarking against an existing BCM framework

• Strategize and Plan: Define the scope of the BCM program, obtain necessary resources and define governance systems. Integrate the discipline with strategic IT and business plans.

• Assess Current State: Determine who the key stakeholders are, and seek feedback from them about the current state of the BCM program. Identify and prioritize key risks and requirements, and identify needed skills and capabilities.

• Implement: Staff and manage the program's implementation. Seek feedback from users. Select technologies. Monitor risks.

• Operate and Evolve: Use governance systems to track the success of the program. Adjust the approach, based on operational results and changing business needs.

The following documents are foundational research to get started with this initiative:

"Activity Cycle Overview: Business Continuity Manager Role"

"Business Continuity Management Defined, 2008"

"Toolkit: IT-DRM Self-Assessment"

This research is part of a set of related research pieces. See Research Roundup: Business Continuity Management and IT Disaster Recovery Management, 2Q10 for an overview.